Hi Eddie,
Now that the noise level has dropped a little bit, this may be a propitious moment to point out why ID is best viewed as a metaphysical school rather than a scientific one, in my opinion. This thread offers a couple of illustrations–namely, arguments from analogy.
- You argued that evolutionary mechanisms were insufficient to explain change by drawing an analogy to travel from London to New York.
- @colewd argued that evolutionary algorithms in computing show the importance of an algorithm designer.
These arguments from analogies seek to illuminate why the existence of a design shows that somewhere in the causal chain there must be an intelligent designer. I agree that there is a designer, and this weekend I will be celebrating His dramatic self-revelations in human history approximately 2000 years ago. However, it’s important to recognize that these arguments from analogy are metaphysical, not scientific. A scientific argument would have to show mechanisms and make predictions that can be falsified. These arguments from analogy can do neither.
I have read much (not all) of Behe’s oeuvre, and I appreciate that he has attempted to bring a mathematical treatment (via irreducible complexity) to the design inference. Unfortunately, his math has been based on critical misunderstandings of the peer-reviewed biology literature. Multiple threads on this forum have already been dedicated to biologists’ analyses of Behe’s misunderstandings, so I see no need to re-litigate that subject in this post.
Other design proponents have been critical of at least some aspects of evolutionary theory, but none have to my knowledge advanced any scientific framework that would show:
- How the design inference would ineluctably yield certain predictions…
- …that would be distinguishable from standard evolutionary predictions, and…
- would be testable by the scientific toolkit.
Since the field of biology has trumped the science card Behe tried to play, only the metaphysical card is left in the design camp’s hand. I happen to think it’s a pretty good card! Not the God-of-the-gaps argument some (not all) design proponents make, but the existence of design implies a designer argument.
That said, it’s clearly a metaphysical argument, not a scientific one. Stephen Meyer doesn’t answer to me, but if he did I would urge him to hoist his metaphysical sail and furl his scientific one. In the long run, the faith and wisdom of the church would grow much more strongly with this approach, in my opinion.
Yours,
Chris
P.S. Happy Resurrection Day!